And Lance whistled a few bars of 'The Hardy Norseman,' the liveliest thing he had done since his illness.
At the appointed hour, the brothers were standing on the top of the cliff, with a broad estuary before them; on the opposite side of which lay the town of Ewmouth at the foot of the old castle, with fresh modern fortifications towards the sea. The town, with its church towers and gas chimneys, sloped away from it; vessels thronged the harbour; and a long weird-looking thready suspension-bridge spanned the broad tide-river to East Ewmouth, the village fast growing into a suburb. There had not been more than time to point out the details to Lance before a waggonet drove up from one of the roads that branched among pleasant 'villa residences;' and in it appeared a white-haired but hearty-looking gentleman, prepossessing and merry, very unlike Lance's notion of attorneys, who shook hands with them warmly, and took care to put the boy under the shade of the driving-seat.
It was a pretty drive, through rich meadows, shut in by the sloping wooded hills which gradually closed nearer; and by-and-by over the shoulder of one looked a very tall church tower, whereat Felix started with a thrill of responsive recognition, and suddenly faltered in the political discussion Mr. Staples had started, but dropped at once, looking at the young man's face with kindly interest.
At the same time road and river both made a sudden turn into a much narrower and wilder valley, the hills beyond more rough and rocky; but the river still broad and smooth, and crossed by a handsome high-backed five-arched bridge, the centre arch grandly high and broad, the other two rapidly diminishing on either side. Over this the carriage turned; and from the crown Lance beheld an almost collegiate-looking mass of grey building, enclosing sunny lawns and flower-beds, and surrounded by park-like grounds and trees, all sloping towards the river, and backed by steep hills of wood and moorland, whence a little brook danced with much impetus down to the calm steady main stream of Ewe. The church and remnants of the old priory occupied the forefront of a sort of peninsula, the sweep of the Ewe on the south and east, and the little lively Leston on the north. There was slope enough to raise the buildings beyond damp, and display the flower-beds beautifully as they lay falling away from the house. The churchyard lay furthest north, skirted by the two rivers, and the east end with the lovely floriated window of the Lady Chapel rising some thirty yards from the bank of the Ewe, the outline a little broken by an immense willow tree that wept its fountain-like foliage into the river. The south transept was cloistered, and joined to the building beyond, a long low grey house with one row of windows above the sloping roof of the cloister, and this again connected with a big family mansion, built of the same grey stone with the rest, but in the style of the seventeenth century, and a good deal modernized upon that. A great plate-glass window looked out on the river in the east front, which projected nearly as far as did the Lady Chapel, the space between being, as before said, laid out in a formal parterre, with stone steps leading down to the river.
'Oh, what a place! what a place!' shouted Lance, starting up in the carriage. 'It's like the minster, and the jolly old river besides! Two of them! Oh! what fishing there must be!'
'I did not know it was really so beautiful,' said Felix in a low voice.
'You remember it?' said Mr. Staples.—'I suppose you can't?' to Lance.
'Oh no! I wasn't born! More's the pity! Do the salmon come up here, Sir?'
'Yes, since the fisheries have been protected; but young Mr. Underwood is a great fisherman, and I fear it is not easy to get a card.'
'Oh, I wasn't thinking about leave, Sir, thank you. I've got no tackle nor anything; but I am glad we have salmon,' said Lance, as though he had acquired an accession of dignity.